#complexity

Armageddon is not around the corner. This is only what the people of violence want us to believe. The complexity and diversity of the world is the hope for the future. ↗

— Michael Palin

#around #believe #complexity #corner #diversity

There's something in this country that is so opposed to understanding the complexity of children. ↗

— Maurice Sendak

#complexity #country #opposed #something #understanding

Human beings, viewed as behaving systems, are quite simple. The apparent complexity of our behavior over time is largely a reflection of the complexity of the environment in which we find ourselves. ↗

— Herbert Simon

#behaving #behavior #beings #complexity #environment

What we call 'evil' doesn't necessarily deserve any kind of respect or understanding, by any means; it just deserves an acknowledgement of its complexity so we can better understand it - so we can help prevent it. ↗

— Bryan Singer

#any #better #call #complexity #deserve

I don't really have preferred roles except those with some complexity. ↗

— Richard Roxburgh

#except #i #preferred #really #roles

In literature, too, we admire prose in which a small and astutely arranged set of words has been constructed to carry a large consignment of ideas. 'We all have strength enough to bear the misfortunes of others,' writes La Rochefoucauld in an aphorism which transports us with an energy and exactitude comparable to that of Maillard bridge. The Swiss engineer reduces the number of supports just as the French writer compacts into a single line what lesser minds might have taken pages to express. We delight in complexity to which genius has lent an appearance of simplicity. (p 207) ↗

— Alain de Botton

#engineering #literature #simplicity #words #writing

This growth in the number, speed of formation, permanence, delicacy and complexity of associations possible for an animal reaches its acme in the case of man. ↗

— Edward Thorndike

#animal #associations #case #complexity #delicacy

He had a theory that musicians are incredibly complex, and know far less than other artists what they want and what they are; that they puzzle themselves as well as their friends; that their psychology is a modern development, and has not yet been understood. ↗

— E.M. Forster

#artists #complexity #friendship #music #musicians

I promise nothing complete; because any human thing supposed to be complete, must not for that very reason infallibly be faulty. ↗

— Herman Melville

#human-nature #humanity #infallibility #nature

Sufficiently simple natural structures are predictable but uncontrollable, whereas sufficiently complex symbolic descriptions are controllable but unpredictable. ↗

— Howard Pattee

#philosophy #science #systems #nature